Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne, Morning (Liber Studiorum, part VII, plate 35)

Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne, Morning (Liber Studiorum, part VII, plate 35)

Joseph Mallord William Turner

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Turner distilled his ideas about landscape In "Liber Studiorum" (Latin for "Book of Studies"), a series of seventy prints plus a frontispiece published between 1807 and 1819. To establish the compositions, he made brown watercolor drawings, then etched outlines onto copper plates. In a few instances, as here, Turner also developed the tone, using aquatint and mezzotint to describe a Scottish loch bordered by mountains with the foreground enlivened by boats and fishermen near a pier, a floating buoy, and the fluke of a submerged anchor piercing the water. Despite the engraved title, the image does not represent Loch Fyne, but the smaller adjacent Loch Shira, and the "M" in the upper margin indicates Turner's category of Marine landscape.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne, Morning (Liber Studiorum, part VII, plate 35)Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne, Morning (Liber Studiorum, part VII, plate 35)Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne, Morning (Liber Studiorum, part VII, plate 35)Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne, Morning (Liber Studiorum, part VII, plate 35)Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne, Morning (Liber Studiorum, part VII, plate 35)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.